by Kat Cameron
When the results of the contest were announced, my heart was beating. I hoped we would win the contest because everyone did their best on the stage. “The first prize is class 3-1.” “Thank you for your cooperation,” I shouted to my classmates. I was very satisfied at result.
Several days passed since the music festival was over. One day I noticed that my friends had become unfriendly to me. Why were they were unwilling to talk to me? I couldn’t find the reason.
Next day, one of my friends gave me a letter. The letter was great shock to me. The letter said that I had become pushy. It gave me an advice that you should be tolerant to your classmates. How was I pushy? Without my effort, my class wouldn’t have gotten the first prize. All the students should have expressed their thanks to me.
The letter showed me another myself. It was unbearably painful to look at the other side of me. Tears were running down my face. I shut myself up in my room. “Am I too pushy?” I said to myself again and again. I was afraid my friends would forsake me forever. I must have hurt my classmates without knowing it. I have to change my attitude toward them. I have to be considerate of them.
The letter was my friend’s kindness for me. Now I think I could change myself a little better. Now I have good friends.
Yasuko Tanazaki
The other side of me. Little Yasuko seems like the other side of me, the side I would be if I’d been born in Japan. The strong female to be hammered down. Since the man grabbed my breast on the train, I’ve seen danger everywhere. I wish it were just gai-jin who are subject to such attacks, but I know better. A man wrote a manual for groping women on Tokyo subways: he was at 1000 women and counting. My friend, Jules, heard about a flasher who was targeting kindergarten children. I’m lost in the maze of Japan.
I return Little Yasuko’s corrected essay at English club. English club has six regular students, all girls, so I can’t discuss the essay immediately. In the audio-visual room, we watch half of The Little Mermaid, one of several children’s videos a friend sent over. The mermaid has given up her voice, traded her tail for legs. In the Disney version, unlike the Hans Christian Andersen fable, the mermaid doesn’t suffer agonizing pain, like walking on glass, with each step in the strange new world.
While the other girls are filling out a questionnaire about the movie (What does the sea witch take from Ariel? Who helps her to swim to the surface?) I hand back Little Yasuko’s essay.
“This is very good.”
“Thank you. I will do my best at the contest.”
“Gambatte.”
She smiles. I recognize that teacher’s smile. Kawabata-sensei smiles the same way when I finally remember some expression she’s taught me five times. I smile when one of my students puts up his or her hand in class and answers a question, even if the answer is wrong.
“How did you feel when you won at the music festival?” I ask.
“I felt very happy,” she says. “But then, not so happy after.”
“But would you have won if you hadn’t encouraged your classmates to practise?”
She shakes her head emphatically, a gesture I taught her. The Japanese equivalent is waving your hand rapidly in front of your face, a habit I’ve picked up when denying I speak Japanese: “Ie, mada mada jozu ja arimasen” while waving my hand in front of my eyes like windshield wipers swishing in a heavy rain.
“No,” she says. “But it is more important to have my friends.”
“We have an expression in English,” I say. “You can’t please everyone. That means that there are things you have to do that won’t make other people happy. But it is more important that you do these things, even if other people aren’t happy. I think you were right to encourage your classmates to do their best.”
Little Yasuko frowns, a sign that she’s listening carefully. But I’m not sure she hears me. Even while I’m speaking, I know I can’t counter-balance sixteen years of cultural training. I don’t even know that I should. Who am I to say I’m right? Maybe friends are more important than excellence, good feelings within the community more important than individual initiative. She has to live here. I don’t.
The next day is March 1. Graduation Day. When I walk into my chilly kitchen, Laffy is huddling in the corner. I open my mouth to say “Good morning” and nothing happens. Not a croak, not a squeak. Total silence.
“Elaine-san,” Laffy says. He must be concerned to add the san; he’s usually not that formal with me. “What is wrong?”
Clearing my throat, I try again. Nothing. No voice. I feel as if I’ve suddenly been turned off or transported to a land of silent movie pictures. Japan has done its best to silence me and has finally succeeded. No pain, only an unpleasant rawness at the base of my throat. I’ve been drinking hot tea all week, cursing the raw weather, the constant rain.
“Are you ill?”
I must look laughable, opening and closing my mouth like a fish, no sound coming out. I point to my throat.
“Your throat. That is most serious. You should see a doctor.”
I shake my head. I’ve heard about Japanese doctors from Jules. She had pneumonia in December, so she went to a doctor in Mito. He didn’t even listen to her chest, just prescribed a regimen of pills, red pills, blue pills, yellow pills. After feeling like her head was sunk in sand for a day, she went off the pills, stayed home for three days with the heat turned high, and drank fluids until, as she said, “I was floating away in pee.” No Japanese doctors for me.
Maybe a cup of tea with honey will soften up the vocal cords. And a hot shower. I try both remedies, but even after three cups of tea, my voice is still absent. I’d call in sick, there’s not much point in teaching with no voice, but I can’t use the phone.
Riding to school, I realize I’m sicker than I thought. I’m panting and sweating both. The students surge by me on their black one-speed bikes, smiling and waving, “Good morning, Miss Elaine-san.” Nodding, I concentrate on pushing one foot after another. I’m shaking by the time I reach school, just a fifteen-minute ride, and also late.
First, I go into the bathroom to wash my face and comb my hair. I’m wearing the blazer of my navy suit in honour of graduation, but I look rumpled and messy, the white blouse damp around the collar. Flushed cheeks with puffy eyes above them. I look like I’ve been on a bender. Running water over the comb, I coax my fly-away hair into sedate lines. Then into the staff room. Kawabata-sensei grabs me as soon as I cross the threshold.
“Elaine, you missed the morning meeting.”
I open my mouth, nothing comes out. God, what if this is permanent, if my voice never comes back? I can’t teach without a voice. Gesturing wildly, I point at my throat. I feel like the Little Mermaid, stranded on dry land and unable to communicate.
“What is the problem?”
Is that concern in her voice? Finally, I think to grab a pencil and some paper. I have lost my voice, I write.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were ill?” she says.
How does she think I could inform her? By telepathy? There is no need to bite my tongue today, as my sarcastic remarks are pre-silenced.
“You must stay for the graduation ceremony, but then you should go home to rest. Kio tsukette neh. Please take care of yourself.” She actually pats my shoulder. She’s wearing a pink kimono in honour of graduation. This is a side to Kawabata I’ve never seen.
At least the staff room is warm, although my desk is far away from the stove. Normally, at this time, I check over my lesson plans for the day, read the Daily Yomiuri, have a cup of tea with Sumo-sensei. He’s absent today, probably helping set up the gym.
The gym is freezing, an open icebox. I take one of the chairs on the side, pitying the students who must sit on the bare floor, the girls in their skirts, rows and rows of plaid, like dolls on a shelf. Except for the lack of chairs, it is like a gym at home. The ceremony is the same too, boring speeches, presentations. No parents. No party.
Last year, in San Francisco, my students wore thousand-dollar
dresses to grad. The year before, Jeff and I were chaperones. Students giggled as we waltzed sedately by.
On the way back to the staff room, I peer out the window. Soft wet flakes of snow fall gently, like cherry blossoms, melting instantly into puddles on the cement in the central courtyard. Lines of black bicycles shelter under sheds on the fourth side of the courtyard; the modified Y of the school wings forms the other three sides. Students under multicoloured umbrellas snap each others’ pictures in the snow.
The snow switches to sleet as I ride home, huge wet splats pelting down on my jacket, my skirt, soaking through to my skin, plastering my hair to my head in limp strands. I park the bicycle at the bottom of the stairs, stagger up the steep steps, and let myself into my cold apartment. Peeling off my clothes in the bedroom, I run a hot bath and soak in my tiny tub, dry off with the towel that is still damp from this morning’s shower. My last batch of laundry is strung out on the plastic clothes rack, both damp and stiff. Swathed in a grey flannel nightgown, I curl up under a pile of blankets and fall asleep.
At four, I hear the tinkly sounds of Edelweiss. Shadows in my bedroom. I drift in and out. A shape rises in the corner of the bedroom, forms, dissipates. I feel Jeff sitting beside me on the bed, his hand on my forehead. “Shh. Go back to sleep.” His hand is large and warm.
In the morning there’s a burning sensation on my left side and back. My throat aches, a flypaper scratch. I’m feverish. They will know I’m sick. I can’t phone. I pour a glass of orange juice, take two aspirin, and crawl back into bed.
Wake up in the afternoon. Sunlight bleaches the curtains for the first time in a week. I’m drenched with sweat, the flannel nightgown twisted around my body like a winding cloth. My back feels like someone pressed an iron on it. I have to get out of the nightgown and change the sheets. Stumbling around, I pull the sheets from the futon, dump them in a heap in the corner, and remake the bed. I sit down for a moment to regain my strength and suddenly I’m in my old apartment, the two places overlaid like a double exposure.
Jeff and I, waltzing in the bedroom. My head nestled against his chest, listening to his heart beat. Thump, thump, thump. The bedroom swims back into focus, my bedroom in Japan, the futon on the tatami floor, a heap of clothes in the corner. Laffy? No, it’s the dirty sheets.
I go into the bathroom to take a shower. As I pull the flannel nightgown over my head, I see a constellation of red marks on my left side. Craning my head over my shoulder, I see a large mark on my back. Flea bites? I haven’t been diligent about putting out my futon every morning to air it out. But flea bites are supposed to itch, not burn.
The bathroom wavers back and forth. I sit on the yellow plastic stool to shower, bracing myself with a hand against the wall. As I’m drying off, I forget about the marks, briskly rub the towel against my back, and gasp with pain.
The bedroom. I doze and then wake. Something in the corner. Is Laffy there? No, he has deserted me. Everyone has deserted me. Jeff has deserted me.
Dark again. Edelweiss plays. I’m rocking back and forth, weeping, weeping. My head aches, my back burns. What day is it? Graduation was two days ago. March 1. It’s March 3. The one-year anniversary.
I’m at home and the phone rings. The hospital. Come down immediately. There’s been an accident. Jeff had been riding home on his bicycle. Hit and run.
Killed instantly.
It’s so dark. I’m in a heap on the floor. I hear Jeff’s voice, soothing as liquid honey. “It’s all right, Elaine.” He’s holding me close, hugging me, our bodies a perfect fit, spooned along our entire length, back, legs, warmth all through me. “It’s all right. Hush, baby.”
It’s light. I hear pounding. The door. Sitting on the edge of the futon, I pull on my track pants. My back is on fire, but my mind feels clearer. I must have sweated out the fever. Four o’clock in the afternoon. I’ve lost a day. Like when I flew to Japan. One day, gone.
Kawabata-sensei is at the door. “Elaine-san. You weren’t in school again today. Are you still ill?”
Isn’t it obvious? I nod.
“Get dressed. I will take you to the doctor. Bring your orange health card.”
I want to protest, but the rash has me scared. I feel as if I’ve walked through fire, a handprint of pain on my back, my left side. I must have been delirious last night. Jeff was here.
I pull on jeans and a T-shirt. No bra. I try to fasten one but can’t stand anything touching my left side. Digging through my official papers, I find the health card and then walk down the stairs slowly, feeling fuzzy and weak. As I sit down in Kawabata’s Honda, my back connects with the seat and I gasp and sit forward, hunched over with pain. We drive into town.
In the office, after we’ve waited for half an hour, we’re admitted. Kawabata-sensei comes in with me, confers with the doctor. I catch the words for fever, netsu ga arimasu, and sore throat, nodo ga itai.
I’ve brought my dictionary with the handy list of words for medical conditions. Gesturing to Kawabata, I point out the word for dull pain, nibui itami, and pat my left shoulder. The doctor nods and motions for me to pull up my shirt, looks carefully but doesn’t touch. Am I infectious? Maybe I’m dying, some horrible skin condition like leprosy or flesh-eating disease. My limbs will fall off. I’ll rot from the inside out.
Kawabata translates. “He says you have mizuboosoo.” She looks the word up in her dictionary. “Chicken pox.”
Shaking my head, I write, “I’ve had it before.”
“He says, it is a kind of chicken pox you have after you’ve had chicken pox the first time. I do not know the word in English.” The doctor launches into a long explanation. Kawabata nods respectfully, occasionally interjecting, “So desu ka.”
“He says if you get very tired, sometimes chicken pox comes back. It is good you came in. He can give you pills for the infection; it will heal in a few weeks.”
I write, “I’ve been run down.” She looks at the words. “Run down? Like a car?” I write, “An expression for very tired.” She nods, “So desu. Run down. Very good. Thank you, Elaine-san.” Shaking my head, I write, “Thank you very much.” She smiles and laugh lines appear, making her look years younger. I bow deeply to her and the doctor.
I’m given blue pills, red pills. I take them gladly. Kawabata-sensei buys me orange juice and cups of instant chicken soup on the way home.
“Don’t worry about school,” she says, as she drops me off at the apartment. “I will fill out your nenkyu forms for Thursday and Friday.” The sempai-kohai relationship is finally working for me. I shouldn’t have been so independent.
Sitting at my kitchen table, I drink a cup of hot chicken soup. The red pills must have codeine in them, I’m floating away.
6. The Eater of Dreams
“Tadaima.”
Friday evening and the school term is over. I’m free for two weeks. I finish supper, telling Lafcadio about my week. He sits by the kotatsu, his head turned so the milky-white blind eye is hidden.
“Sunday, before I leave to go to Kyoto with Jules, I’m going to Kawabata-sensei’s house. She invited me to a tea ceremony. She’s going to dress me up in one of her kimonos.”
“She has invited you to a tea ceremony? That is a great honour. I myself have participated in many tea ceremonies.”
“Great, you can fill me in on all the gory details. Just let me do my own ritual first.”
I fill the metal kettle with water, turn on the gas and put the kettle on to heat, then take down my teapot and a china cup, the one with a handle and a design of blue cranes flying over a cone-shaped mountain. Earl Grey is the only variety of packaged tea available in the foreign store in Mito, but it’s a change from o-cha and Lipton. I swirl hot water in the teapot, as my English grandmother taught me, and then add two teabags and wait four minutes. Fortified with a cup of tea, with generous dollops of milk and sugar, I ask Laffy, “So what happens in this tea ceremony?” I have a vague notion of wooden tea houses in deep-green, mossy gardens (an image from t
he movie Shogun) and rows of serious kimono-clad ladies, delicately sipping. “Do I have to raise my pinky finger? Do I put the milk in first?”
“Tea is a very important ceremony,” Laffy instructs. “You must act like a proper Japanese lady.”
He spends twenty minutes instructing me in the art of tea. “You must not make faces when you see the tea. It is not English tea. It is green, almost spinach-green, and will taste bitter and be whisked to a foam like ocean spray.”
“Why drink it if it tastes bitter?”
“You must not ask questions. Just open your eyes and mind and surrender to the serenity of the ceremony. A form of meditation.”
“Right. The zen of tea.” I’m teasing him, something Laffy usually accepts with bad grace. Now, though, he is not paying attention to me, lost in his own world.
“I once wrote a story about tea, from the fragment of an old Japanese tale. A man sees the face of a young samurai in his cup of tea. He empties the cup, washes it, fills it again, and again sees the face, mocking him. The samurai’s mocking smile enrages him and he drinks, realizing only after it is too late that he has swallowed a soul.”
“Another one of your creepy stories. What happens next?”
“There is no ending to this story and I did not invent one. I leave it to you to imagine the consequences of swallowing a soul.”
Being dressed up as a gai-jin doll has its advantages. Where else would I get to wear a silk spring kimono, decorated with pale pink and red plum blossoms on a white background? Kawabata-sensei has me strip me down to my underwear.
“Elaine-san, what are these marks on your back?”
Perhaps she imagines I’ve indulged in some ritual Christian purification for Easter. I tell her they are scars from my bout of chicken pox in March. I’ve since learned that it wasn’t actually chicken pox, it was shingles or, more technically, herpes zoster, a disease that sounds suspiciously like an STI. The scars no longer hurt and they’re fading slowly, but there is still a red blob the size of a palm on my back and a cluster of dots under my arm. They look like arrows or cranes flying, if I turn my head sideways. The other scars from that time are hidden. Did Jeff return that night I was delirious? His presence is no harder to believe than Lafcadio’s. How many people in Japan have one-hundred-year-old ghosts in their apartments? How many people are visited by dead lovers?
